Daisy Chain
by define-serenity
Summary: [Barry/Caitlin] About a week ago Nora's teacher gave the class a new assignment, using only the words 'daisy chain' to describe it— the interpretation and execution of the assignment was up to each individual student, and it's clear which interpretation Barry picked.


**author's notes:** written for simplysnowbarry's **Snowbarry Spring**, prompt: honey, science project, daisy chain, pass me that... that thing

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**DAISY CHAIN**

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"What are you doing?" Caitlin asks, lips pursed, when she enters the shed at the back of the garden. She lowers the stack of papers she'll be grading over the weekend to an unoccupied workbench, inspecting the mess Barry's made of what he lovingly refers to as their 'science cave.'

When they bought the house, a little over five years ago, Barry'd made it his pet project, rebuilding the shed from the ground up with a little help from Joe and Ralph, turning it into a private lab where they both could work in peace on some of their passion projects. Of course, that was before they had Nora.

Nowadays the shed served more as a storage area for long forgotten experiments rather than a space they actively used.

Until today, it seemed. There were cables strewn all over the floor; ethernet, USB, HDMI, some of them stripped down to their copper wiring— and behind one of the two desks in the room she finds her husband, elbows deep in the guts of some old desktop computer he must've picked up at a dump somewhere.

"Barry..." she starts, putting two and two together once she notices the rest of the old laptops set up around the shed.

About a week ago Nora's teacher gave the class a new assignment, using only the words 'daisy chain' to describe it— the interpretation and execution of the assignment was up to each individual student, and it's clear which interpretation Barry picked.

"Pass me that-" Barry snaps his fingers without so much as looking up, pointing at a soldering iron plugged in near the door, "-that thing."

Stilling, Caitlin crosses her arms over her chest. It isn't the first time she's found Barry minding some of Nora's schoolwork, in fact they've both had to familiarize themselves with maths again, which was decidedly not taught the same way it used to be. Barry's sat with her for hours and puzzled over problems, and she'd helped Nora study grammar and spelling, which wasn't Barry's forte.

When it came to science, Nora knew she could come to either of them, whether it was chemistry, biology or physics, and they took it upon themselves to make sure she had multiple textbooks at home whenever her school books lacked information. In the shed they'd showed Nora the practical applications of some of the experiments her books described, and Nora'd been all too willing to learn.

Sometimes, however, Caitlin worried they were pushing a little too much in one direction.

Barry looks up, immediately interpreting her stern complexion. "What's wrong?"

Caitlin draws in a breath. She's not upset, and hopes she doesn't come across as such, because Barry's the best dad Nora could ever hope for, and if anything his enthusiasm for science has always inspired their daughter to learn more about it.

A daisy chain network, on the other hand—

"She's five, Barry." Caitlin eases her expression with a smile. "Maybe we could leave the electrical engineering until she's seven."

"Yeah, but"—Barry stands, closing the distance between them in a few exciteful strides—"None of the other kids are gonna think of something like this. Imagine the looks on all her friends' faces when she-"

"Honey," she hushes, drawing a hand down Barry's arm.

Barry falls silent, nose scrunching, and rubs the back of his head. He knows as well as she does that Nora can't present a project like this— the teachers might encourage parents to get involved in their children's homework, but they shouldn't do the work for them. Nora wouldn't like that either.

"It's not my science project." Barry sighs.

"It doesn't even have to be a science project"—she wraps her arms around Barry's neck, his hands sliding down to her waist—"no matter how much we'd both like it to be."

She'll admit her first thought was talking to Nora about daisy chain kidney transplants, but she'd kept the idea to herself; they'd agreed a long time ago that while they were more than capable of homeschooling their daughter, they wanted to give Nora as normal a school life as possible— with the Flash for a dad and a former metahuman as a mom there were aspects of her life that would never be normal.

"Yeah, I'll-"

Barry looks over the mess he made.

"I'll clean this up."

Caitlin chews at her lower lip, upset that she's taking some of the fun out of this for Barry. She hates thinking of herself as the kind of spouse who spouts nothing but responsibility when half the reason she fell for Barry was his ability to chase his crazy ideas to the very end. It reminded her of when her dad used to wake her up in the middle of the night to work on their make-belief periodic table.

Nora's lucky to have a dad like that, too.

"Have you considered a star topology?" she asks, eyes ticking along the set-up of computers all over the room. "That way-"

Barry nods, picking up her train of thought as if reading her mind. "-the network could handle multiple node outages without cutting off the working machines."

Barry trips back a step, eyes narrowing on her face. "I thought this wasn't my science project."

"Nora is free to interpret her assignment however she chooses," Caitlin says, raising her hands as if to literally surrender to Barry's idea, "but would we really be good parents if we didn't show her all her options?"

Truth be told, Nora has a mom as passionate about science as her dad, and she wouldn't change that for the world— it's what brought them together years ago at S.T.A.R. Labs, and while they've found much more common ground than simple science, it's where they find themselves and each other, again and again. If Nora inherited just a small percentage of that they'd be the luckiest mom and dad in the world.

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**fin**

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End file.
